It has long been known in the beverage-producing industry that the beverage containers to be produced are subjected to various treatment steps, such as for example blow-moulding shaping in which plastics-material preforms are shaped to form plastics-material containers, sterilization procedures, filling procedures, closure procedures and also labelling procedures. In this case the beverage containers are usually guided separately. Different divisions are frequently provided in a manner dependent upon the respective treatment procedure. In the case of a block arrangement with post-labelling, i.e. labelling of the bottle already filled and closed, it is usual in the prior art for a screw-type block arrangement to be used. In this case the screw is used for the division delay, since a larger division is usually used in the labelling machine than in the filling machine. The drawback of this procedure is that, in the event of changes to the bottle, size parts are necessary or size parts have to be changed.
In addition, continuous conveying of the bottle on the carrier ring is frequently not possible. In particular, when the bottle has already been closed with a closure, it is only possible to guide the bottle with a gripping element which engages below the carrier ring, since the space above the carrier ring is covered by the closure. Closed bottles can therefore be transferred from one gripping element to a further one only with difficulty, since when the bottles are still open the gripping elements engage alternately above and below the aforesaid carrier ring.
In this case, other conveying devices such as conventional conveyor belts have the drawback that in the case of containers of different height the apertures are situated at different heights and it therefore becomes difficult to take them over by further gripping clamps.
The object of the present invention is therefore to make available a conveying device for containers which can be adapted to different container heights in a simple manner and which therefore allows widely varying containers and container shapes to be conveyed. In particular, it should also be made possible for containers to be conveyed in a manner independently of their height so that the height level of the aperture of the containers remains constant.